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Well, Me-Made-May is finally over – 5 weeks/31 days of handmade with daily photographs. I’m not even going to pretend I wasn’t relived to NOT take a photo of myself this morning :)

Since I was on vacation pretty much the entire week, I tried to be creative with my photos (mostly because I didn’t want to drag the tripod, camera *and* laptop with me to Florida lol). It was a bit of a struggle on a couple of the days, mostly because I spent lots and lots of time in my bathing suit… but I managed!

5-26
Shirt: Sewaholic Renfrew – modified some more since it’s original inception; you can’t see it too well but I cut the ribbing off the bottom & replaced it with wide lace (just like my Taffy blouse)
Pants: Colette Clovers
Necklace: Vintage bracelet I turned into a necklace
Shoes: Rugged Warehouse
Shades: Pangea
After a long day of driving (nearly 8 hours in the car! Plus 2 hours at some rando gas station after a belt in Landon’s car snapped & we had to wait for my dad to fix it. Which was preferable to towing it to some shop & paying them assloads of money to fix it, by the way!), we made it to Santa Rosa Beach! This is the view/balcony via our condo.

Uh huh.

5-27
Top: Giant men’s Hawaiian shirt resized by me
Skirt: Vintage, dyed by me
Shoes: Rugged Warehouse
Couldn’t get anyone to take a picture of me, so I settled for one of those awful mirror shots in the fitting room at Goodwill haha.

5-28
Top: thrifted – from the aforementioned Goodwill, no less!
Shorts: Simplicity 5110
Shoes: Walmart
Hat: Not mine, just trying on the goods
This was taken in a cute little town called Seaside, just a few miles from Santa Rosa Beach. We rode our bikes there, and I spent the entire time dying over the bike paths-
Totally flat, totally separate from the main road (which is on the left). It was SO NICE! I wish we had commuter/non-greenway bike paths like this in Nashville.

Seaside was really cute – there were tons of bikes

And shopping

And food trucks

And pretty things to look at

And a bonus outfit shot from Monday, 5/28:
Birthday dinner with Landon (and the rest of the family). I wore Vogue 1174. I knowwww I should have worn my birthday dress (I even brought it!) but everyone else was pretty casual so I decided on the blue dress at the last minute. SORRY.

5-29
Dress (worn as a swimsuit coverup): Hawaiian Sundress
Hell yeah I spent the whole day at a waterpark. And then Fudpuckers (where my little brother lost his debit card & the kind man at the bank verified the last transaction was from “pudfuckers” lol), and then some chintzy tourist shop called Alvin’s.
From left to right – Maddie (Matt’s girlfriend), my mom, Caroline (my niece), Matt (little brother!), me, my dad, & Landon.

5-30
Top: Jalie 2921
Skirt: Vintage, dyed by me
Party Hat: YEP
Last time at the beach! I gave up on trying to wear cute outfits & just put on something comfortable for the drive home :)

5-31
Dress: Colette Parfait
Shoes: Target
Purse: Thrifted
Scarf (tied on purse): Flea Market
Last day of Me-Made-May! I celebrated by going to my favorite fabric store for their 50% off sale :)

So yeah! I consider this may a total success – albeit not nearly long enough, as I still have masses ofhandmadeclothingyetto beworn. Oh well! Since wearing my stuff wasn’t really much of a challenge, I tried to mix up how I wore it, and I think I did pretty good! I can’t think of anything this challenge made me realize I had gaping, except maybe some summer jeans – which I bought fabric for yesterday, btw! I also used this challenge as a kick the butt to get me into my mending/fit-fixin’ pile, for certain things I never wanted to wear (I’m looking at you, Swiss Dot Violet!)

The only thing that I didn’t like was the daily photos… it got old pretty fast, and felt pretty narcissistic the entire time. I did find myself getting more comfortable in front of the camera, until I got to the point where I didn’t feel like I needed to take 40+ pictures to get that ~one perfect shot~.

5-20
Dress: Simplicity 8345
Belt: Thrifted
Necklace: Bracelet I converted into a necklace
In my sewing room – I was pretty sick of taking daily pictures at this point!

5-21
Dress: Vogue 1227
Cardigan: Thrifted
Belt: Thrifted
Shoes: Target
Necklace: Antique, restored by InVintage.
My birthday! :D Since I couldn’t wear a dress called “The Bombshell” to work (I mean, our dress code is sorta lax but it ain’t that lax!), I wore last year’s birthday dress. Also, that necklace is my very favorite piece of jewelry I own – and the most expensive one to boot (and by “most expensive” I mean it was still less than $50 because I normally buy my jewelry at the flea market lol).

5-22
Dress: Vogue 1174
Bolero: Thrifted
Shoes: Nine West
-CONFESSION- I made this dress over 2 years ago & I have only worn it once (twice if you count me putting it on for pictures)! I just really hate the way I look in strapless dresses. Inspired by MMM’12, I pulled it out of the closet, dug in my scrap bin for the rest of the blue satin, and made a halter neck strap. Now it is much more wearable :) Yay!

5-24
Dress: Simplicity 3061
Belt: Thrifted
Shoes: Jessica Simpson
Earrings: Pangea (Nashville)
I pretty much always wear this dress with a nautical flair, so this time I tried to go in a different direction. I think I like it!

5-25 (today!)
Dress: Vogue 1117
Belt: Thrifted
Shoes: Steve Madden
I love this dress so so so much, but the poor thing really doesn’t get as much wear as it deserves – I made the mistake of lining it with polyester lining! Ew, so hot! Oh well, that’s me – suffering in the name of Looking Good.
ALSO: Bonus! I got this fabric from Gorgeous Fabrics, and it is mad cheap right now – someone go buy the rest of her yardage!

I’m pretty bored with taking pictures of myself every day – it seems so redundant and, I dunno, kind of narcissistic (which is how I feel about most fashion blogging in general, SORRY). I will be glad to put this project to end next week!

As a side note, I counted my remaining handmade garments and I definitely have more unworn pieces than there are days left in May. Right now I’m trying to decide if I should pull this project into another week or so, just to wear ALL my shizz, or consider a month good enough & move on. I haven’t repeated any outfits – I just own a metric shit ton of clothes – and I really miss some of the stuff I wore at the beginning of the month.

With that being said, I am going on vacation starting tomorrow at the buttcrack of dawn. SO EXCITED. We’re going to the beeeeach! And I bought a cute bathing suit! (For the 3 of you who are worried about my cat being left alone – don’t worry, I got a housesitter :) Wow that sounds so grown-up haha). I’ll still be documenting MMM’12 in the Flickr group – hopefully all with pictures ~on the beach~ haha – but the blog will probably be nice & silent for the next few days.

Sorry for the radio silence this week, peepz. I have been house/dog sitting since Thursday night, which means I have not had access to my sewing machine for almost a week! I opted to not bring it with me since there was just so much stuff to carry around (and plus, I make giant messes when I sew ahaha), figuring I would just knit instead. Spoiler alert: didn’t get much knitting done either. Whoops! Anyway, I’m back at home now so hopefully I can get some sewing done over the weekend, maybe :) I miss it so much!

5/12
Top: Sewaholic Renfrew (unblogged, sorry!)
Jeans: Vogue 2925
Shoes: Walmart
This is basically the same outfit as Friday – I had cute stuff packed, but it ended up being really cold & rainy so I stuck with jeans for the second day in a row.

5/13 – Mother’s Day!
Dress: Actually, this is two pieces… the dress made me look like a box, so I separated the skirt from the top & sewed white elastic for the skirt waistband. I can wear them together or separately, woohoo.
Cardigan: Agatha – my first sweater :)
Belt: Thrifted
Necklace: Fire Finch (Nashville)
Shoes: Walmart (man those things are filthy… I should wash them)
This is me & my mommy, in her sewing room. Isn’t she so pretty?! Love her :)

5/14
Top: Yardsale
Skirt: Style 1568; it’s supposed to be culottes but it looked awful in this linen/cotton blend (too stiff), so I converted it into a skirt. The linen would also explain why it is wrinkled as fuq – I swear I ironed the night before!
Cardigan: Thrifted – ended up wearing it tied (like how I have it on 5/15) after this picture was taken.
Belt: Thrifted
Shoes: Nine West
Earrings: Thrifted
Brooch: Flea market – it’s a skunk holding a flower ahaha

ALSO, today was Bike to Work Day… don’t worry, I managed to wear something Me-Made :)
5/18, pre-work
Tshirt: Stenciled & resized by me
Pants: Lululemon (obviously not Me-Made, but I wrote a review on ‘em if you are interested!
Shoes: Converse
It gets very hot/humid here, so I brought a change of clothes for the office haha :) Oh, and I guess you could also consider my basket Me-Made – it started out as a purse from the thrift store, I just cut the handles off & zip-tied it to my bike. Baskets are expensive!

As a side/non-sewing note, Bike to Work Day was really awesome!
There was a great turnout

I know what you’re thinking – two posts in one day? Is the world really in the process of ending? Is Jesus coming back (no, actually, that was supposed to happen last May, except we all know SOMEONE didn’t bother to show up to his own damn party)? At any rate, I hope y’all love meee because you’re going to have to look at my mug twice today, teehee.

I left off last Friday, so we’ll pick this up starting Saturday!

5/5
Dress: BOMBSHELL
Shoes: Steve Madden
Excuse my disgusting sewing room floor, I hate vacuuming!
Ooh, but see my iPhone!? Landon bought me an early birthday present! He is the best :) I’m on Instagram now if you want to follow me :)

5/6
Dress: Simplicity 4170
Cowboy Boots: courtesy of my mom’s closet :)
Necklace: Fire Finch, here in Nashville
This is actually the very first dress I made with a pattern – so it’s super pre-blog (I think I made this in 2006). Don’t get too terribly excited about how good it looks, though – the original bodice was total shit – I didn’t line it, didn’t gather under the bust (lolwut), inserted the zipper rather terribly by hand, etc. The bodice you see now is what happened after I learned some skills 6 months later, ripped it off, and re-made. It’s still kind of amateur looking, but that’s ok!

5/9
Top: Simplicity 4400
Skirt: Thrifted, sized down & repaired (the shirring at the waistband was completely busted so I sewed in new elastic… does this count as Me-Made?)
Belt: Thrifted
Shoes: Jessica Simpson
Earrings: Thrifted
The light was really bad that morning, so here you get to see the side & crawl space of my ugly house!

If you don’t recognize my top, that’s because it’s very new & very un-blogged! This top was actually the whole reason why I bought the Jalie pattern – I thought it looked quite similar to Colette’s Jasmine pattern, except in a nice knit instead of bias-cut woven. I’m not going to make a separate post for this top, just because I would basically be repeating my last one, but I will go over the minor pattern changes I made:
– I shortened the neck ties quite drastically. I can’t give you a real measurement – I just put on the pink top, pinned the ties until I liked the length, and copied that to my pattern piece.
– Instead of arranging the ties as suggested by the pattern (through a hole in the front seam, tied, or fastened with a buckle), I wrapped a small piece of matching bias tape around them & sewed it into place by hand.
– Took in a little bit at the side seams to make it more fitted.
– Shortened the sleeves to cap sleeves.
– Top-stitched the hem & sleeve hems with a double needle in matching blue thread.

I am rather pleased with the result! Although, it is quite sailor-y so I definitely run the risk of looking really costume-y… I think I kind of look costume-y in this outfit, actually, but IDGAF.

Oh, I should probably talk about that ADORABLE dog standing behind me… that’s Turtle :) She is the dog of my bestie/life partner, Morgan (the one who moved to Macedonia!). Her mother is keeping Turtle while Morgan is fulfilling her time at the Peace Corps. Anyway, she’s actually out of town visiting Morgan, & the originaly dogsitter had some medical problems so I’m taking care of the dogs for her until then! I just love Turtle, she’s such a little sweetie (and Percy, the other dog, was lounging on the steps directly behind my camera FYI :) I’ll try to get a picture of her at some point). This also explains why I’m suddenly standing in an area with an amazing garden backdrop – it’s her house! And look – you can see my little truck in the background :)

Those of you who follow me on Twitter or lurk the MMM Flickr Pool have already seen this picture… I snapped it right before I left for a lovely Saturday afternoon wedding (spoiler: it was a beautiful wedding and I overindulged and DEFINITELY paid for it the next day, ugh haha).

I did take better pictures, though! And now I will share then with the group :)

Fair warning – there’s a lot here, and you can see that I moved locations a couple of times while shooting. I actually took over a hundred pictures – I know that sounds kind of, uh, self-obsessed, but the light was extremely bright and it’s pretty difficult to get a good shot when you have to keep running back and forth to the tripod! I was able to narrow the selection down to WAY below 100, but there are still quite a few. I normally feel a little narcissistic posting a bunch of pictures of myself in the same freakin’ pose, but I’m really proud of my dress so just indulge me this one time. Ok? Ok!

Here is where I started – in my backyard. Isn’t it so lush & green? Lovely backdrop for this dress :) Unfortunately, the light was too harsh here, so only a couple of pictures survived the cut.

On the porch (which appears to be the best light ever; this is why you always see outfit pictures on this porch haha). Not a terribly awesome picture of me, but – my hair! My hair looked so good! Alas, it was almost 90 degrees on Saturday and extremely humid so the curls ended up drooping about 5 minutes later. Ah well.

It got too hot, so I gave up and went inside to the air conditioning.

The strap! I made mine fairly wide, with small gathers where it joins the bodice. There are button holes & buttons, but the strap didn’t sit right buttoned in, so I used tiny fell stitches to anchor it to the top of the bodice as well.

I’m not going to share any more pictures or details of the insides, I think there are plenty enough as it is on this blog!

A few thoughts on the Bombshell:
– It is quite comfortable! Of course, I tend to wear my clothing with little to no ease regardless, but boning is something that I’ve always associated with discomfort. The boning in this dress is great: it kept everything into place but didn’t hinder any movement whatsoever.
– When I first finished the dress, I was worried that the bodice was too long for my torso. Maybe I’m just used to a shorter bodice, because this one absolutely ends right at my waist, so it’s the correct length. Anyway, now that I’m looking at the pictures, I think it looks fine.
– Despite multiple muslins, the middle of the bodice does not actually sit flush against my chest. I guess my cups are a smidge too small as it should fit just like a bra does (and my bras do fit with the middle flush against me. Is that tmi?). Then again, I think any gal who is increasing the cups to fit a chest that is too big for the original pattern size is probably going to struggle with getting that piece to lie flat. The lesson here: no one else noticed, and I only noticed because I have this wonderful angle of looking straight down. I still think the fit looks great. Don’t sweat it if yours doesn’t lie flat either!
– As I mentioned, it was 90* outside and the wedding ceremony was in the middle of a flower garden covered with direct sunlight. It was hot outside! And even though my dress has many layers and is extremely fitted, I didn’t feel any more warm that I would in shorts & a tshirt. Make sure your fabric (and lining) is very breathable if you are planning on wearing this in super hot weather!
– I enjoyed working on this dress, and I loved the process of all the fiddly detail work, but I will confess that toward the end I was just ready to be DONE! I think this is a great dress for a special occasion, but make sure you give yourself a nice long deadline in the distant future so you don’t feel terribly rushed – a dress like this, with all the fitting, and handwork, and special techniques… doesn’t need to be rushed.

I guess that’s it? I am very pleased with my finished dress, and I definitely think the course was worth the $$ – I learned so much, including new favorite hand-stitches and little tips/tricks that never occurred to me otherwise. If you are still on the fence for a class like this, I hope this post & these pictures nudged a little closer to my side :)

The original incarnation just wasn’t doing it for me. I know it’s looks super cute in the pictures, but it was very uncomfortable in real life – mainly because those damn armholes were WAY too low-cut for sleeves. Every time I moved my arms, the whole shirt would ride up. As a result, I never wore it and felt very sad inside since 1. dotted swiss; and 2. cotton batiste, aka my two favorite fabrics that very instant.

So I cut the sleeves off.

I wish I could tell y’all that cutting the sleeves off immediately solved the problem, but that would be a lie. Remember those low armholes? They were so low, sans sleeves, that you could see the whole side of my bra without even being sneaky about it. Which, I mean, I’m definitely known to let it all hang out from time to time, but we’re talking about a freakin swiss dot button up with a peter pan collar here. Not really the right vessel for looking tarty.

I used part of the sleeves to add an extra wedge of fabric at the bottom of the arm hole – I ended up having to raise it a good 2″, and it’s still a little too low but I am NOT in the mood to fiddle with this blouse anymore. I finished with bias tape facing (machine-stitched because, again, NOT in the mood). I also took in the side seams a bit more at the waist to give it some more shape, since I was feeling pretty box-like at that point. I’m not 1000000000% happy with the finished result – it kind of looks, well, homemade – but it’s much better than the sleeved version.

The lesson here: don’t buy a loose, free-flowing boxy blouse pattern when you prefer to wear everything with little to no ease.

On a happy note, look at the newest addition to my house as of last night!
YES YES YES
It’s actually Landon’s set, not mine :) But OH MAN it’ll be SO FREAKING NICE to do laundry in my own house! I really love doing laundry (and folding it! Haha!), but I hate dragging it in & out of the house. So I’m pretty excited about this. And yes, this is absolutely relevant to MMM’12 since pretty much all the good stuff is in the dirty clothes bin right now.
Also, check out my reel mower on the right (don’t look at the recycling on the left, please & thank you). I mow my lawn with a reel mower because I’m a BAMF. And also because gas is expensive.

Oh, and my Bombshell dress is almost done – all that is left is securing the vent (seriously, a little 2″ diagonal line haha) and figuring out how I want to attach the strap. It’s lookin’ good and I’m feeling good about it!

I leave you with this –
In case you were ever wondering what it looks like when the plastic cone inside a spool of serger thread crumbles into pure nothing.

Hey-o! I’m not quite finished with my Bombshell yet (only one video left! ::sob::), but I thought we could discuss some of the inner workings that are going on inside this monster of a dress.

I have the zipper & lining inserted & I’m pleased to report that everything still fits exactly as it should! Yay! I don’t know about y’all, but when I’m fiddling with a dress this snug, I end up trying it on a LOT. Lots of pinning & basting & walking around my sewing room in my underwear. I’m sure my neighbors just love me, ha.

Here is my lining – completely boned (lol)
The lining is 100% cotton batiste (and it is quite sheer, as you can see all my little red markings, oh well) and the boning casing is double-sided satin ribbon that I sewed into little tubes.

Putting the boning (lol) in was a BITCH. OH MY GOD I HATE CUTTING SPIRAL STEEL BONING. There are 11 pieces inserted here, all different lengths, all tipped with their little metal tips… it took me an entire episode of LOST to cut & tip those little suckers. Putting on the tip was easy – Karen has a good picture showing exactly what this entails – but the cutting was so so awful. I was using Landon’s wire cutters, and when I complained that they weren’t cutting the boning (lol), he gave me the side-eye until I made him try it himself:
This is how far he got.

Anyway, I got them all cut (obviously). And I’ve heard lots of people say to cut the side spirals & it will just pop apart – well, good luck with that, I basically just manhandled mine until they gave up & fell apart in sheer agony lol.

Everything else has been smooth sailing, though!

The lapped zipper turned out gorgeous.

There is a black petersham zipper guard (1.5″ wide, if yr curious!)

Oh, right, the zipper is hot pink!

As is the petersham waist stay :)
I just love fun/colorful surprises in my clothing :)

I still need to have this dress finished by Saturday afternoon… all that’s left is the vent, hem, and halter strap. The dress fits fine without the strap, but I really don’t like how I look in strapless stuff. Right now I’m debating how wide to make the strap – WWYD?

As a side note, Me-Made-May is going splendidly (you know, the whole 2 days it’s been May), and I have made an executive decision to not post daily outfit photos on this blog. Instead, I’m going to compile them weekly & dump them all that way. I am posting daily in the Flickr Pool if you feel like lurking everyone’s progress, though!

Also, this has nothing to do with the Bombshell dress, but look at the chicken I painted last night!
I went to a painting class with my friend Carla. So much fun! The chicken’s name is Bud, by the way :D This will go nicely with the poppies I painted with my mom. Yessss.